


Leaving

by ShadowSelene (Shadowdianne)



Series: Turnabout [1]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-23
Updated: 2019-03-23
Packaged: 2019-11-28 21:15:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18213704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadowdianne/pseuds/ShadowSelene
Summary: "You are leaving again, aren't you?"Asked both by waknatious and thequeenandherswan back at tumblr





	Leaving

"You are leaving again, aren't you?"

The words stopped Emma; right foot still trying to ease itself into the tight leg of her jeans, the back of her tank top bunched up and showing more skin than usual. She turned, slowly, to Regina’s bed where the brunette still laid. Head on her hand and elbow on the bed, brown eyes glimmering with purple under the glowing light of the nightstand lamp, the brunette looked relaxed but the tension on her shoulders, the way her other hand was draped protectively over her stomach, gave her away. Half-covered with sheets as rumpled as Emma's clothes, Regina was biting her lower lip, face unreadable but the hoarse undertone of the still-hovering question one that made Emma swallow thickly.

They had been doing this for quite some time now; the tension and unspoken truths what had inevitably led them to where Emma now stood -about to exit the mansion as silent as possible while juggling with her car keys and trying hard to forget Regina’s resigned look every time she left once more. It was a deal: one they had made a week after Emma had signed the divorce papers, still far too numb and still far too detached to think twice about how Regina’s breath had hitched as she had come up to her in the night out Snow had insisted all of them had. Aesop’s light had been low enough for Emma’s fingers go unnoticed as they climbed up Regina’s back and Emma had smiled at that as she had nuzzled the older woman’s neck, a single request falling from her lips.

“You are drunk.”

The answer, while biting and true, hadn’t stopped Emma as she had merely rose her face, chin proud, dirty white magic on her fingers, as she had asked a question she already knew the answer to.

“But we both want it, don’t we?”

Regina had been unable to answer negatively to that and Emma had found herself wondering that, in hindsight, that had been because the brunette had forgotten how to lie about that after so long of being apart or if she had grown tired of pretending that Emma’s question wasn’t a lie. Either way, ever since then, the long nights, the slowly moving away after the deed was done, the far too long stares, had started. And every night Emma left with a kiss on Regina’s shoulder and their magics tingling with each other’s colors.

Sighing and forcing herself back into the present, Emma nodded and stared as Regina slowly sat at the edge of the bed; the openness on her face morphing to a mask Emma shivered at. When the older woman spoke again her voice wasn’t cold but there was a void beneath each vowel that made her nibble her bottom lip; nervous.

“Don’t forget your jacket.”

It was a far too innocuous statement, as if Emma had merely come by to drop something, to merely ask Regina about her day before going back to the small apartment she had managed to get for herself and that stung more than the coldness, the hate. Yet, Emma forced herself to nod before picking the reddish-colored jacket, the softness of the material making her think back on the many times she had wore it before, on how it had transformed into her own armor and how she had relegated it to the back of her closet until Hook had left. Fingers bleeding white, she put it on and turned towards the door, her booted feet doing the barest of noises as she walked.

She knew how this looked. She knew that, ultimately, Regina had been right. She had been drunk, drowning herself into the realization that had come to her far too late about how the mistake of tying herself to a story that wasn’t truly hers didn’t really made her the perfect personification of a title she hadn’t even wanted in the first place. She shouldn’t have insisted.

But she had wanted to and so, as she opened the door and walked into the corridor, into the stairs, she was very good at pretending that Regina’s magic didn’t reach for her as she walked away, royal purple climbing the floor and walls around her in a flurry of oozing sparks.

At first, they had both done this in both houses; Emma’s easier to come and go and Regina had ascribed to that non-written rule. Until the moment Emma had found that it was easier to leave than seeing Regina go and so she had started to, maybe consciously, maybe sub-consciously, to up the ante whenever she knew that Regina’s mansion would be the place they would end up into. And Regina always complied, eyes full of something that made Emma always remember that as much as she was able to see when the other was lying she too could be read by the brunette, no matter how hard she tried to play dumb.

But then they had started to fall asleep into each other’s arms. Small naps, barely minutes, but it turned out to be more than enough to make very difficult for Emma to leave, to disentangle, to swallow back words she didn’t know she was even allowed to think.

And so, she descended the stairs, letting the sounds of the house envelop her as she imagined how Regina would probably already be readying herself to bed, picking a book perhaps, reading before truly falling asleep.

_“You are leaving again.”_

The question, the verb, was a difficult one and it was still fitting in a way that made her swallow bitter words; the ones she should have said; the ones she had thought back at the town line while Pan’s curse approached them, loomed over them. The ones she had thought as she got swallowed by darkness and evil and fear. The ones she had thought as she had walked into a closet, Regina in tow and a shadow of someone who wasn’t alive anymore just a few feet behind. The ones she had believed she had seen in Regina’s eyes back at Robin’s apartment, words dropped and skin thrumming, far too alive, far too thin, far too prone to be opened and cut.

_“Again.”_

She reached the front door and grasped the handle, shoulders hurting, the veins on the inside of her wrists burning her skin as magic kept on pouring, bubbling, sizzling.

She didn’t want to leave; she knew that. Yet, there were far too many errors she had committed, far too many things she could have done differently. Biting into the interior of her mouth, her fang piercing the skin, drawing blood, she muttered a quiet “fuck” that dripped into her neck, into her chest, as she stilted; the nighttime breeze slipping into the house through the slightly opened door.

She didn’t want to leave.

Her body answered to the wish, rather than the orders she kept sending it to it. She had screwed things up, over and over again; she had been blind for too long: too much of a coward, too much of a fool. The fact Regina had already given her the opportunity to simply be was something she would have never considered possible and while she recognized the destructive thought, the toxic mindset, she didn’t have it in herself to truly change it. Not without opening far too many half-closed gashes.

Yet, her body still answered to the magic and so she felt dizzy as fog rose, the light from outside tinted silver as it transformed and thickened, cold fingers attaching themselves to her legs, to her thighs, to her torso, until there was nothing left of her but a blink. A blink that re-appeared in the middle of the master bedroom, just as she had never left.

Regina wasn’t reading a book, wasn’t trying to sleep but, to her defense, she didn’t say a thing as Emma gaped; angry, tired.

Far too tired.

“Can I stay tonight?”


End file.
